The Massacre

         For the dead of 9/11, and all the dead

Sometimes I feel that the dead
are mourning for us.
They approach when we can't see them
They talk to us when we can't hear them
and no matter how much they try to touch us,
we always forget the knowledge
that when we lost them
we also lost ourselves.

I feel within my nightmares
the cruelty they experience when they love us --
Wanting to speak to us
means wanting to have the very bodies
it has just become impossible for them to have.
We always look upon them as souls
and we say we love them with our souls --
Our bodies no longer know how to love them.

And in their own way they are cruel to us.
By the time we remember
recently forgotten names
they have already changed
and left us with the love that was rightfully ours
from the beginning.
It is only we, whose knowledge comes from our
    bodily lives
who can turn their cruelty
back into tenderness.

       The Stones of Men

     I have looked for you in the faces
     of all those people who turn backward
     like the sun turning toward death
     for fear of you, whom they might see.

     I have asked for your whereabouts everywhere,
     and every place upon this earth has been revealed
          to me.
     I cannot hold
     all I see.

     Now, if I think about you at all, I hide it.
     I hold my voice back in the market place
     to keep from talking about you.

     Today I have not met a single person who is not
          heartless.
     I have not met a single person who does not believe
     that I am already staying with you
     whom I am searching for.

     These are the stones given to all men and women.
     Not one of us can live a single day
     sitting upon this pile of stones.

The Mountains

I have been told that the mountains
would help me,
And yet in the mountains
I find no peace.

When I look toward them,
I still do not see them all.

The mountains are all people
before the mouth of their heart opens,
and today all the mountains
have crushed in upon my marriage-grave.

Today I can dream no longer.
The landscape I am walking through
is neither my dream nor yours --
and I,
who now know the faces
of so many men and women
no longer know where the place is
in which I last lay down.

   The Meeting with God

I, who do not know my own soul's name
have already seen her,
disguised as the shadow of a river,
saying to me:

     "Cry as much as you can
      for you cannot live another day
      without meeting God.
      Your heart cannot be broken more."

When I came back into the world
all those of the world made me forget you,
saying that I'd loved you more
than anyone could love God;
God would punish me, they all said,
by making me love even more.
How can I pretend not to know you
when I have loved you since
before the day I was born?
You are among a new people.
And my soul has come here
to help me find you.

      "Give up the last thing you could own,"
          she says,
      "Take the last bite of food out of
          your mouth.
       Give up this life."

The Return

You, who I thought
was so far away --
you, are now standing
in my door.

Look at me --
since you have gone away
I too have become life and death.
The dead child I have
put into the earth,
and the living one I have
hidden away.

The dishes I meant
to set the table with
when you came back
are cracked now,
and I can no longer buy
electricity --

but come, and eat
upon this bright tablecloth,
for toward evening
the sun makes
this whole house glow.

And always, toward evening
I see you
as I saw you five years ago,
about to leave
and about to come back to me
in a single step.

We had just buried the dead child,
and the living child
which you never knew
I am still hiding.